Earth, wind and fire

You have to want to fall out of bed two hours before dawn on a Saturday, throw on camouflage and drive into the foggy Delta.

You have to want to strap on clunky wading gear that will keep your feet dry - if not warm.

You have to want to jump on the back of an all-terrain vehicle for a bumpy ride into the fields, the morning air stinging your face.

You have to want to sit in a flooded cornfield for two hours, waiting for some careless duck to swoop into range.

And you have to want it to rain the whole time.

"We're hoping for the worst weather - the hardest rain, the strongest winds, the cloudiest days," Don Ferguson says, his face still shrouded in the early darkness.

"People say, 'You're going where?' "

They're going hunting.

New Census data suggests a resurgence of interest in a sport that previously had been declining in popularity.

A survey conducted every five years, most recently in 2011, finds interest in hunting to be at a 20-year high across America. A downward trend in fishing has also reversed itself.

No one is sure quite why, considering the nation's time-sapping obsession with electronic media.

Most of 15-year-old Ian Hoke's friends will probably still be sleeping long after he fires his first shot on this Saturday morning.

"That, or they'll be playing video games," he says.

There is no time for such distractions out on Eight Mile Road, a few miles west of Stockton.

Six boys and their adult chaperones are spending a weekend at Woody's By the River, a private duck club, where they'll test their skill in a statewide youth hunt that is held each year after the regular season has ended.

Friday night is for fun - hanging out in the well-furnished clubhouse, watching a ball game, munching burgers.

By 5:15 a.m. Saturday it's all business. Everyone is dressed. No one is yawning. There is coffee on the stove, and if you really want them, beans left in a pot from the night before.

With any luck there will be better eating soon. As the sign on the clubhouse wall says: "There is a place for all God's creatures ... right next to the potatoes and gravy."

These boys are "sophomores." They've hunted once before, but they still have much to learn. The adults will make sure they do just that.

"Here you go, dude," he says. "Pretty much all of our hunters here, we learned on a whistle. That's what we're gonna work on today, OK?"

Dressed hat to boot in camo, each boy and each man takes a wine cork, sticks it over the stove's flickering blue flame until it smolders, and then rubs the ashen end in streaks across his face to darken the skin. An old Delta secret, they say.

Then it's off to the fields. They must be ready to shoot when the sun comes up.

The ATVs bounce off into the darkness. When they finally stop, everyone trudges through a mud flat into the flooded corn.

They set up in a line amongst the stalks, facing an open body of water upon which more than 100 decoy ducks are already in position. The boys hold their shotguns with the barrels pointed safely upward.

And they watch.

As the sky lightens, the hunters hear from a distance shots fired elsewhere on the island, by other boys just like them.

It's hard to wait their turn. The four restless retrievers with their eyes to the sky are just as frustrated. ("We could give up hunting if we had to," Ferguson says. "The dogs couldn't.")

Yes, these boys will learn patience today.

They'll also learn the responsibility that comes with carrying a firearm. They'll learn the ethic of shooting only if they intend to eat.

They'll learn how to think.

"There's a lot of time on your hands in the field," Wampler says. "Sometimes I go by myself just to think through some things."

And in a group like this, they'll learn the comfort of companionship.

After all, talking with your pals helps pass the time on mornings when the weather is calm and the ducks - spooked after a long season of shooting - are hard to come by.

While they wait, the kids hear the great stories of past hunts. They hear about the lousy ones too. And they hear the tired motivational one-liners from the adults, who probably heard them when they, too, were boys knee-deep in a flooded cornfield.

"Remember, guys, the secret to killing ducks is, don't move."

"Well, you gotta be present to win."

"This is why it tastes so great on the plate."

And just to keep them smiling, when the whistles fail to attract: "That would be the 'keep-on-going' duck call."

Friendships are made and strengthened in these fields. Wampler hopes to build a stronger relationship with his nephew so that Hayden always has someone to talk with.

Wampler, a 43-year-old who remodels swimming pools, enjoyed those relationships himself as a boy. Dating back as far as his grandfather's day, his family hunted each year at Jackass Flat on the east side of Sonora Pass.

For others it's brand new, as the Census data suggest. Ferguson, a 51-year-old carpenter, had never hunted until Wampler invited him a few years ago.

On that first hunt, most of the birds winged right on past. Ferguson's friends nicknamed him "Grasshopper."

Now he knows the ropes. But Ferguson still appreciates even those days when the hunting is poor.

He'll always have Delta sunsets.

"We spend a lot of days where we might shoot just one bird," he says. "But you don't have to harvest something to see nature, to see animals, to see things that maybe other people have never seen before. This is God's country."

God is not providing many ducks this morning, but eventually one is spotted diving toward the pond from the south.

"Get ready," one of the adults whispers.

Seconds later: "Shoot it! Shoot it!"

Alarmed, the duck aborts his landing and rockets over the corn toward the north.

But Ian, his gun in the air, is still tracking the bird across the sky.

Just before he's out of range, Ian fires. The duck falls.

It's a pretty good shot, from about 35 yards. C.J., a 20-month-old black lab, tears off into the corn. Somehow he finds the duck - a green-winged teal - and brings him back to Ian, before hopping up on a seat and shaking mud and water onto anyone who happens to be standing nearby.